De Blasio fails a test to diversify high school admissions

If the kids get blunt pass-or-fail results, so can the adults. So let's speak plainly: Mayor de Blasio and Schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña's efforts to open up the city's top high schools to more black and Latino students were, in their first year, a failure.

In a system with an often vexing array of choices, admission to eight of New York's high schools is based solely on a student's score on a single, tough test.

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That selectivity is a big part of what makes Stuyvesant, Brooklyn Tech, Bronx Science and other schools great. It opens them, on a meritocratic basis, to whip-smart strivers, including the children of Asian immigrants.

But, let's be honest, it also privileges kids who eat, drink, live and breathe the Specialized High School Admissions Test from the moment they can crack open a book — and disadvantages boys and girls, disproportionately black and Latino, who are chronically underprepared by elementary and middle schools.

It is a shame of a city where nearly 70% of 1.1 million public school kids are black or Latino that students from those ethnic groups comprise just 10% of the kids in the eight selective high schools, with numbers even lower for the crown jewel schools.

Last summer, after years of grousing about the imbalance, the mayor and chancellor unveiled a battleplan.

They pledged to get more kids to sign up to take the exam, with focused outreach teams. To offer more kids a public version of the type of test prep other youngsters take for granted.

They even let some kids take the test on a school day to help attract those who might not otherwise make the trip.

Hardly any of it worked.

While the number of Latino test-takers jumped 9% from the year before, fewer black kids showed up. The outcomes followed in line, with Latino admissions climbing 3%, while black admissions were down 8%.

Why did the outreach fail? Report back. Why did none of the tutoring have an effect? Find out.

With numbers this bleak, pressure will surely intensify on the state Legislature to trash the test and shift to a system that takes into account grades, recommendations and the like.

There's nothing wrong with preserving a test-based admissions system — one immune to favoritism and all other forms of meddling — for a handful of schools in a city with more than a thousand of them.

There's something very wrong with letting a huge racial imbalance persist, or widen, without decisive action.